sslredir

What is it?

sslredir is a simple utility used for redirecting incoming non-SSL
connections to outgoing SSL connections. This is useful for enabling
applications such as mail, news, or IRC clients, which do not support SSL, to
connect to SSL servers. It also supports connecting to the remote host
through a SOCKS4A proxy, so sslredir is ideal for use with Tor.

sslredir is similar to stunnel or socat, except that it is not as general-purpose as socat. It uses less than 450 lines of Python, so it is simple to audit (although it does rely on M2Crypto which relies on OpenSSL, both of which are rather more difficult to audit). sslredir is also designed to work nicely with Tor, whereas I had run into bugs with both socat and stunnel.

Where can I get it?

You need Python 2.3 or later, and M2Crypto to use this. Your distribution probably has both of these already packaged. (e.g. for Fedora, try yum install m2crypto, or for Debian, try aptitude install m2crypto)

If you want to verify the signatures for the files above, you'll need my GPG key. (Key also available on pgp.mit.edu.)

Who do I harrass about bugs?

There are no bugs. But if you'd like to email me praise and lots of money, my email address is tack@urandom.ca

The nonsense written above can be blamed on Jason Tackaberry (tack@urandom.ca).